The Wilted Winter Rose
by JeffC FTW
Summary: Montgomery Fiske's tragic birth is told in the eyes of his loyal valet, Bates. First in the Monkey Fist Saga.


**In my fic "The Monkey King Takes His Queen", it was explored that Monty Fiske had a devastating early life: his mother died giving birth to him, and his father shunned his only son thereafter - the one thing he had left of the wife he'd loved more than anything in the world. Therefore, young Monty grew up alone and wanting to match up to something if his own father didn't love him...and all of this is seen through the eyes of Bates, his loyal valet.**

 **This oneshot is rated so for some gore and sensitive material, so you've been warned.**

 **I do NOT own Kim Possible or its characters - save for one who happens to be Bates' wife who died long before "Monkey Fist Strikes", as well as others like Lord Fiske's parents. And Tom Kane is one of my favorite voice actors ever; he might find this look into Monkey Fist's mysterious - and heartbreaking - life moving, IF he were to come across this.**

Early December, and it was a rare terrible winterstorm that ravaged the lands of the Fiske Castle. He could hardly believe it when the lord himself had phoned the family doctor who had gotten delayed on the way to the isolated area, miles from London, and all to assist in the childbirth.

Bates was currently with the two midwives as the lady herself was in bed, her hands tied to the bedposts so she could grasp onto something and not thrash in her agony. Her gauzy nightdress was sticky with sweat, showing certain parts of her body that only her husband could see, and the red staining from the waist down was horrendous. He wanted to unleash the contents of his stomach, not because of the sight, but because the woman herself was suffering.

Lady Catherine had been in labor for hours, ever since the wee hours of the morning, but no woman controlled her body in any sense, since the beginning of time, and he knew that for being only a young man of eighteen. His family had served the Fiskes for five generations as his beloved who assisted him and the older midwife, her mother, had done. But Honor would gladly leave the castle one day if stricken powerfully to her core for whatever reason, and one time she had asked him if he would trade his life of servitude for freedom under the rare sun.

He put the thoughts to the back of his mind and focused on the woman who was only half a decade his senior. Her lush raven hair was tangled and damp with sweat, her pale complexion shining with it, and her bright sapphire eyes glazed with unbridled damning pain. Five years of being wed to a man her father picked for her, taking away her bright future as an archaeological student, had brought her to this point. But in place of what she'd lost, she was bringing forth her first child - a child her husband did not truly want but allowed her to have only because he loved her more than the world itself and would gladly trade anything for her happiness. Sometimes arrangements rewarded you for what was taken for granted.

"Damn it, where is that blasted doctor when we need him?!" Alice Browning, Honor's mother, seethed as she applied hot water to the lady's forehead, alleviating her external senses only for them to return and screaming. "If only the storm hadn't come at a more 'perfect timing'," she stated sarcastically, making him flinch. She was more hot-tempered than her daughter in this regard. But Honor looked at him with immense worry.

"John -" She had never gone to medical school, but she had studied enough of the subjects to know what they needed to do in case of emergencies. "- if Dr. Stafford doesn't come, we will have to...cut her belly open."

Bates closed his eyes momentarily and tried to block out that horrific thought, and failed. The baby had not come in twelve hours, and no improvements or progress was made. Lord Fiske was not even with his own wife as he had been needed elsewhere. Without an expert surgeon to perform the cross-C-section, the risks were high on both the mother and her child - and the decision solely rested on the shoulders of the husband himself. Bates was not looking forward to breaking the word to Edward Fiske, whom he found in his study and buried in his work at the desk, either of his own will just to escape the troubles of his screaming wife giving birth, or because he was back under pressure from his colleagues.

"How is she, Bates?" Fiske asked, turning around only halfway. A lone lantern was lit to give some light to the gloom brought on by the gray sky and the roaring white beyond the glass window. The man's features were hard to tell between stoic and cracking like the ice above the windowsill.

"Not well, milord," the young valet answered, holding his hands before himself. "In fact, the doctor still has not arrived yet, and I'm afraid we must take matters into our own hands."

Edward Fiske sniffed. "What does that milky-faced girl know about surgery?" he snapped. "How can I trust her with my wife and child?"

A part of him was angry that he had to speak of Honor in that manner. "With all due respect, sir, Honor is capable, and she will no doubt see through that no error will be made...only..." He trailed off, only picking up when Fiske barked at him to get out with it. This was nothing fresh. "Milord, you must choose between the lives of Lady Fiske and your child."

The storm inside the castle broke worse than it occurred outdoors.

"Let me see her!" Fiske roared as he stood up and stalked past the younger man who immediately slipped away as to avoid a physical contact with the man's wrath, following him to the birthing chamber and not stopping until they reached their destination, where Lady Fiske herself had fared no better and struck Bates with guilt, even though Honor and her mother had managed. The great decision was still to be made, and it would not be an easy one. It could end tragically two or three ways.

One: the mother's life would be spared for the sake of letting the unborn baby die in her womb.

Two: the mother would die and allow her child to live in her place, thus depriving Edward Fiske of the woman he loved immensely.

Or three: he would lose them both.

"Catherine!" He dove to her side much to the disapproval of Alice Browning, but he was the lord of the castle. "My love, I am so terribly sorry for not being here!" He took her hand which was still tied above her into his, her smaller fingers wrapping with his. He seldom showed his emotions, and just now they lashed from stone-cold anger to devastated fear for her. "Bates said..."

Her voice, once high and clear as an opera singer's, was hoarse from screaming, and another was going to come soon. "I know." Her husband bowed his head, body wracking.

"I...I don't know what to do. I can't lose you, and I can't lose you both...but I also don't want you to lose what I gave just for you!"

He never even wanted a child, yet an heir was needed to inherit the castle and its holdings one day, and he loved Catherine enough to let her conceive, and five years later, the miracle happened...only for it to end in the worst of realistic terms unimaginable. The sight of more blood staining the sheets, turning them into a dark burgundy shade, made Bates' stomach lurch. Time was running out; the decision had to be made, but the lord himself could not choose, and his wife knew that.

"I know," she repeated, croaking, "and I've already made my mind up, darling." She looked like she wanted to touch his face but could not, and there was nothing she could do, either, about the horror evident in his eyes.

"Catherine," Fiske gasped, drawing back, "what are you talking about?"

"S-save...the baby."

Something inside Bates crushed when she basically told him, her husband and the women in the room that she wanted to die and to let her baby live. She had been happy in her marriage, yet she was forced to give up so much of her identity because of her father; now with a child after five years of complications, the pregnancy itself had caused such issues that both she and Edward knew that they would never have another child, based on instinct. Not to sound cold, but it took away the possibility of saving her life and trying again later.

Lord Fiske objected, of course, shaking his head frantically. "No, my love...!" He was silenced by her leaning his way, grimacing as she was wracked with another wave of internal agony.

"Edward," she ground out in her exhaustion, "we'll never have another. If you save the baby, a part of me will live as long as it lives. If we lose it, even if I live, then what is the point?" Her eyes were wild with fire now. "No part of me, no part of us will live on! I beg you, as you love me - _save the baby!"_ Her voice broke off then with a howl of another contraction hitting her that it could have been the last straw to causing Bates' eardrums to burst.

Honor and her mother were still tending to her and arranging the monstrous medical instruments out while watching the scene as husband and wife debated over whose life was more important, and Bates himself was helpless as the lord himself. He was completely helpless to assist his wife; his only choices were to do as she wished and lose her forever, or save her life and have her resent him forever. Their union had been arranged by their fathers, but they fell in love in both letters and in their first meeting, both young and full of life...and now it was coming to an end in two ways that would scar the man himself and his staff present permanently.

And that blasted Dr. Stafford! Where was he when you needed him?! The storm was to blame, but nature meant beyond mortal hands, and you had to make do with what was in front of you.

So the final decision was made by the lady herself. Her grief-stricken husband could not bear to witness the macabre moment of her belly being cut open before his eyes, so he waited outside the room until it was all over. Bates would be cruel to call his master a coward for not being there for his own wife, so he remained and helped Honor and Alice with the procedure the daughter excelled at despite having no doctoral degree, putting the lady under - the best she could be, and notably to not feel any pain while she was still awake and aware.

It was "perfect timing" when the castle doorbell rung that everyone nearly exploded, and would have cost the mother her life along with her child's if one of the spare servants hadn't answered the door for the valet himself who considered Lady Catherine and her unborn child important than that - and was it really a surprise that Dr. Stafford finally made it to the birthing chamber in time for Honor to finish with doing the line down the mother's stomach?

"I see you have managed thus far without me," he noted as he rushed to their aid, scowling and shaking himself off, knowing what had been going on before he made it. "I curse this storm, otherwise I should have been here for you, my lady..."

Well, he was here now, and Bates smiled gratefully at him despite the grave circumstances. Stafford finished the deed himself in helping Bates bring the baby from its mother's womb. Choking cries filled the air...and the young valet held the kicking little one covered in so much blood in both his hands.

"My lady, it's done!" Alice Browning exclaimed, though she was only half-jovial because of the gravity in the air. Her daughter hurried to Bates' side, with a blanket in her arms, but the baby was covered in so much gore that it needed to be cleansed at once, not before Dr. Stafford cut the cord from its frail mother. It was then that Bates saw what it was.

The baby was a boy.

Lady Fiske wheezed and laid back while the doctor treated her and had the elder midwife aid him. "What is it?"

"It's a boy, my lady," Honor answered, turning to look at her with a small smile, taking the child from his arms and going up to the mother herself, not intending to remain beside her long enough because her newborn son needed to be washed and swaddled. "A beautiful, healthy son."

Catherine sighed as her hands were released, but she was too tired to even raise them to hold her baby. "My son..." she breathed, then closed her eyes only to reopen them at the doctor's insistence that she not close her eyes lest she wanted to miss - Bates tuned out what he said because he hurried into the next room with Honor to clean the child and inspect him amongst each other.

"He's so precious," Honor said softly, green eyes shining bright with tears as she ran the warm, wet rag over the naked infant. He whimpered and grunted at the unfamiliar fluids washing away the sticky, hot red substance over every inch of his body. While his lover did her job, Bates had the opportunity to examine the child. He weighed a perfect eight pounds in his arms, looked strong and healthy, and a mass of black hair covered his head. It seemed he carried much of his mother in him, but his eyes hadn't opened yet, so there was no telling whose eyes he inherited.

When she was finished and dried the child, she wrapped him up in the blankets and picked him up properly, cradling him and laughing when he calmed down upon realizing he was in safe arms. Bates felt something inside him melt at this innocent life that nestled into Honor's breast even though it wasn't his mother's. His arms moved of their own volition and took the baby back into his embrace - and the melting heat got stronger when he handled Lady Catherine's newborn as though it were his own.

This was what she risked her life for - or should he say, _whom_ she risked her life for? He hadn't had a chance to hold a baby yet, or even a newborn at that, so the foreign feeling was a strange form of warm comfort in these harsh, dire circumstances. He felt like he was moving like a ghost as he and Honor returned to Lady Catherine who had been cleansed but looked more fragile than before, because she'd lost so much blood...and that was not the worse of it as he stood in front of Dr. Stafford whose middle-aged, warm features were somber and grim.

"I did the best I could," he said softly, "but I'm afraid there's nothing further I can do. She has only a few moments left, so I recommend giving her the child, my friend." He rested a hand on the younger man's shoulder, who bowed his head and nodded wordlessly, knowing the young mother deserved to hold the child she always wanted one last time before she left them all. Her rosy skin had turned sickly pale, her lustrous ebony hair pulled into a painfully thin fashion behind her head, and she was smiling ever so weakly. Only twenty-three years old and she was leaving so soon. Her son needed his mother, for God's sake. Yet it seemed He had other plans.

Alice bowed her head as she went behind her daughter and gently laid a hand on her back. "I will be outside, my lady - and my lord," she added to Lord Fiske who had come in at some point while Bates and Honor took care of his son, but he was far from enthusiastic to see the baby in his dying wife's arms.

"Edward...he's beautiful," Catherine whispered as she cradled her baby, laughing weakly when his eyelids fluttered but did not open to even see the mother he was going to lose. It was a poignant scene that the valet would remember for the rest of his life. "He's so beautiful, I don't want to let him go."

Her husband leaned over, trying to stifle his sobs and failing. "Just as I don't want God to take you from me," he said hoarsely. She leaned into him then.

"If that's the way it is..."

"Don't say that!" he said forcefully, pulling back and looking at her in horror, making Bates angry inside. His wife was dying, and he hadn't even been with her the entire night and day because of work, and the child he didn't even want was going to end up being unloved by the man who created him - but not if John Bates had anything to say about this.

"Milord, if I may be bold," he said, taking a step forward, Honor's worried hand on his shoulder and urging him to be careful, "please reminisce the good days we have all had and decide a name for your son."

The lord looked like he was about to burst when his gentle wife placed a free hand on his. "Darling, don't explode; not now," she pleaded, and when he did calm down only for her, her sweet rosy smile was back. "I have already named him, and I know it is the one for him." The baby stirred and grunted softly once, making her laugh again.

"Montgomery."

Edward snorted, though attempted to smile just for her. "After your uncle who spoiled you as a child," he stated, kissing her pale forehead. Catherine sighed.

"Yes. He is to be named Montgomery _Edward_ Fiske." It should have been an honorable namesake for the father, but when Bates looked his master in the eyes, he saw no such change of heart - only regret, agony, grief, and one more that hurt most of all.

 _Blame._

He was blaming the child for this.

Bates wanted nothing more than to shake his master out of his idiocy, but he'd be risking his position and family name - lesser than the Fiske family as it was - and thrown out, and who knew what it would do to Honor and the innocent baby boy, named Montgomery to honor his mother's uncle. His own father was cursing at his newborn son internally for the irreparable pain he caused the woman who brought him into the world, but it wasn't the young one to blame in the slightest.

Catherine let out a soft gasp then, and her eyelids began to droop. Everyone knew what was coming now, and her helpless husband could do nothing now but lean close beside her as she whispered her final words.

"Montgomery...my precious little Monty..." she murmured, touching the soft cheek and then pressing a kiss to his forehead, before looking up at her husband one last time. "Edward...take care of our son...he needs you..."

Lord Edward Fiske nodded without a word, brusquely, and shared one last kiss with her before her last few breaths escaped, and her eyes closed one final time. The room itself was still and quiet for a few long, calm moments before it erupted with a roar.

"NOOOOOOO!"

The explosion as well as the chair he had been sitting in was thrown over in his fit of grief and rage, at the same time his dead wife's hold on their baby son loosened, and the infant himself was on the verge of slipping off the bed if Bates hadn't acted fast and scooped him into his own arms. Before that and even now, the baby began to wail as he sensed his mother's life leave her. The valet carried protective strength as he cradled his new charge as he and his lover watched the master and father unleash his temper on the entire room, screaming wordless nonsense and madness that they both knew they had to retreat. Who knew what would happen if they remained any longer, and with the baby who was not and never would be accepted without his mother in his life to come.

Honor was raging as soon as they were away from the birthing chamber. "Honestly!" she fumed, hands on her hips. "How could he do this?! This is his child, his son - _his own flesh and blood!"_

"Dear, please don't let him hear you," Bates begged, bouncing the baby up and down, but he continued to whimper and cry that he had been rejected. She glared at him but was not directing her rage at him.

"Honestly, John, he lost the woman he loved and is blaming his own child for this!" she shouted, her fire not to be quenched as he well knew it. Sighing, Bates looked down at the baby still in his arms. If his own father would not love him or take care of him, teach him, then the valet would.

Lady Catherine Fiske had been a bright, beautiful young woman who suffered and loved too much, and in the end, it proved to be her downfall as she ended up trading her life for the child in her faithful servant's arms now. Her son, her Montgomery Edward - Monty for short, now that Bates knew it - had been born in the winter by the rarest rose in existence.

And the winter rose itself was beautiful - but gone too soon. What a cruel parallel to what happened today.

It was then and there that when baby Monty grunted again, the valet gasped when he looked down and saw the eyes flutter _open._ The boy's eyes were blue.

Just like his mother.

Honor calmed down enough to lean down and gasp softly. "Oh, John, look at him...he's his mother's son in every sense..." And that would be enough for Edward Fiske to never lower the shields he obviously had now placed over his heart, to prevent more hurt from coming again. John Bates knew it good and well, and there was nothing he could do about that. He was still young and with more to learn in life, but if there was one thing he had been raised by his own father, it was the complexity of a man's heart and how easily shattered it would be.

"Yes, just like his mother," he agreed, looking into the infant boy's eyes, wide with curiosity and pure innocence. He managed a smile when the baby reached for him with one of his tiny hands, allowing a finger to be taken into it. "Don't you worry, little one. I will protect you and guide you. If your own father won't love you, then I will - and so will others to come."

Baby Monty Fiske would not speak or understand a word he said for a long time to come, but he did yawn briefly and close his eyes as his way of acknowledging what the young valet told him.

 **This was really an emotional ride for me and for daccu65 who helped me with this, especially as it hit too close to home for him because of a story he told me about he and his wife suffering a miscarriage seventeen years ago, and he had feelings of helplessness similar to what Edward Fiske felt.**

 **Reviews are much appreciated, but NO FLAMES or backlash, please. It was vital that we understand Monty Fiske and at least care about him to a degree.**


End file.
